PRESS RELEASE: Correlation Established Between Mobile Phone Usage and Banking Behavior

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Brussels-based WSBI (World Savings and Retail Banking Institute) and Cignifi, the leading mobile data analytics and scoring company, today announced the results of a project demonstrating clear correlations between mobile phone habits and banking behavior.

The results of the project are summarized in a White Paper entitled Mobile Phone Data as the Key to Promoting Financial Inclusion, available on the WSBI and Cignifi web sites.

Over the course of a five month study, WSBI and Cignifi analyzed the savings and mobile phone usage habits of individual consumers in Ghana — a country where nearly one hundred percent of the adult population uses mobile phones, but only sixteen percent of those over fifteen years old save money at a financial institution. WSBI partnered with its member in Ghana, HFC bank, a retail bank and the country’s leading mortgage provider, and telecommunications company Airtel Ghana, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited, to gather data for the analysis.

“Our modelling of a large number of mobile phone usage attributes showed clear correlations between mobile phone habits and savings behaviour,” said Jonathan Hakim, CEO of Cignifi. “This points to the potential value of mobile behaviour as a way to identify potential users of savings products,” added Hakim.

Analysis of transaction history and savings behavior of 180,000 HFC customers over a five-month period revealed distinct customer segments. Customers in two of these segments appeared to be prime targets for increased financial inclusion, with relatively high level of engagement (demonstrating the importance of financial services in their lives) but low average savings balance. These HFC customer types were then matched with mobile phone usage data to identify the specific mobile behavior that characterized the target customers.

Source: Digital Journal (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Education
Tags
financial inclusion, research